But Flo knew even better than her little brother that it would be easier for Dick to steal the second time than the first.
Very few boys and girls she had ever heard of, none indeed, had left off prigging from stalls, and snatching from bakers’ shops, and thrusting their hands into old gentlemen’s pockets, when once they had begun to do so.
Not punishment, not even prison, could break them. They had their time of confinement, and then out they came, with more thieving propensities than ever.
Her mother had told her stories upon stories of what these children, who looked some of them so innocent, and began in this small way, had ended with—penal servitude for life—sometimes even the gallows.
She had made her hair stand on end with frightful accounts of their last days in the murderers’ cells—how day and night the warder watched them, and how when being led out to execution they passed in some cases over their own graves.
And children once as innocent as Flo and Dick had come to this.
Now Flo knew that as mother had not appeared the first time Dick stole, she might not the second, and then he would gradually cease to be afraid, and learn to be a regular thief.
The only chance was to save him from temptation, to part him from Jenks.
Flo liked Jenks very much—he had a bright way about him, he was never rough with her, but, on the contrary, had not only helped to keep the pot boiling, but had cobbled vigorously over her old boots and shoes, when he happened to come home in time in the evenings.
Still, nice as he was, if he was a thief, and they meant never to be thieves, the sooner they parted company the better.